I woke quite early for this event, and happily was headache-free. After a hasty trip over I signed on, grabbed my number, and rolled over to the start. This event had a very small field – 17 riders – and it’s to the credit of the organiser that he persisted with running the event. Unfortunately I was off at#2, which meant I was likely to have a pretty lonely ride, with only one rider to catch.As it happened, that’s exactly what happened. The course runs south from Tempsford to turn at the Sandy roundabout, proceeds north across the Black Cat Roundabout to turn at the Buckden roundabout. From there, we return to Sandy, then back to Buckden before finishing at the Girtford underpass just north of the Sandy roundabout. As an aside, I might just observe that by this stage of the season, I’m getting heartily sick of riding up and down that stretch of the A1! The nadir being the ‘100’ I rode a few weeks ago – the first 86 miles were on this stretch of the A1.

Anyway, I caught #1 before the first turn (less than three miles, and from there on, I was riding on my own until #5 passed me just after the second turn at Buckden with about 12 miles to go. One reason I dislike being so early in a field is that having a set of riders to catch (and indeed a set of riders who might catch me!) is that there’s an element of having a target to chase, which usually adds a bit of performance enhancement.

As usual, I found myself flagging a bit over the last five or six miles, so it was a bit of a relief to squeak a 1:57 – only just though, as my time was 1:57:58!

Only one more ride on the A1 in 2010 – next week I’ve entered a ’10’ on the F1/10, which I think runs from Tempsford to the Biggleswade North roundabout and back. Next week’s weather looks a bit crap as far as Thursday, hopefully it’ll brighten up for the weekend, as not only do I have a time trial, but it’s the Woburn Oyster Festival!